Eight Tips For Writing Explosive Action Scenes

Tracy Lawson, who’s a choreographer in her day job, as well as a writer, has written an interesting blog post on choreographing action scenes. One thing I particularly likes was the way she said it meant actions could be shown, through the senses, rather than told.
Other tips she shared included advancing the story through the characters’ movements, making sure body language is appropriate, field testing your scenes, and using maps to orient yourself in the action.
This article is well worth reading.
http://www.bookdaily.com/authorresource/blog/post/1715186


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

The top 20 misspelled words quiz

It's time to test yourself? How well did you do?

PS. Yes, I got them all correct.


http://bitecharge.com/play/top20/h5


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Marie Force’s Reader Survey

Ms. Force is careful to say that her survey isn’t scientific. She sent it out into the world and it’s a compilation of those readers who responded to it. However, since almost 6000 readers filled the survey in, it’s well worth spending a few minutes reading the executive summary if not the entire document.

Note: All these percentages and numbers are of those who replied to the survey, not of the total population.

51% of readers are between the ages of 36 and 55.
95% are women.
Contemporary fiction is the most popular genre and Kindle the most popular ebook format.
Facebook is also the most popular way for readers to get information about authors (69%). Author websites came in second at 53%.

Free books continue to be a good way for authors to introduce themselves to new readers. 40% of readers said a free book introduced them to a new author they wouldn’t otherwise have tried.

For the full story see here: https://marieforce.com/images/docs/2015ReaderSurveyExecSummary.pdf

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

The $19billion typo

An American nuclear waste facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, took 20 years and $19 billion to build and a simple typo has shut it down. A radioactive drum burst open on Valentine’s Day last year. Drums of radioactive material were trucked in from around the US, where they were placed in salt caverns that would eventually be collapsed, burying the waste.

But investigations have shown that instead of INorganic (clay) kitty litter being added to the contents of the drums to stabilize it, a revised policy manual in 2012 instructed workers at the laboratory to use organic kitty litter to soak up excess liquid in drums of nitrate salts.

Which in turn led to the inevitable kaboom. A site that was supposed to last for 10,000 years is now being closed after just fifteen years.

It really would have been much cheaper to get their manual edited and proofread professionally by a couple of grammar Nazis.

The full story is here: http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/eric-schlosser-exposes-our-nuclear-delusions-at-festival-of-dangerous-ideas/story-fn5fsgyc-1227478302666


*Bonus points to anyone who noticed the typo in the picture.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

10 Common Mistakes Writers Overlook

Writers’ Life recently published a list of ten common mistakes writes overlook.

They include ones I’ve mentioned many times before. In fact, you should all be able to recite them. Things like telling instead of showing the reader what is happening, and repeating “pet” or “crutch” words. Then there are run-on sentences, and empty words that are pure padding and don’t forward the story at all.

One good point they make that’s slightly different is to watch the dialogue. Do all the characters speak the same? Is someone more a caricature than a character? Try reading the dialogue out loud and see if it makes you cringe.

The full article is at: http://writerslife.org/10-common-mistakes-writers-overlook/ and is well worth reading.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

The Bestseller Book That Didn’t Exist

This is an absolutely brilliant hoax. It's hard to believe it ever happened, but the way it was pulled off is amazing.
I find human nature endlessly fascinating, and an author's fans should never be underestimated.
Go, read, laugh, enjoy.

http://www.jmarkpowell.com/the-bestseller-book-that-didnt-exist-how-the-author-of-a-beloved-christmas-classic-pulled-off-the-hoax-of-the-century/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

The 35 most actionably useless corporate buzz words

“By leveraging our stakeholders' core competencies, this low hanging fruit could be actioned by close of play.”

Do you know what that means? No? I’m pretty sure no one else does either, but it sounds kind of official and businesslike so it must be okay? Right?

Wrong.

This article is for everyone stuck in a job where the management really speaks like this. Or a country where the politicians do. (“Heavy lifting” any Aussies?)

It’s also a warning for writers. Please ensure only a villain uses these terms except as a joke with their friends after work.
If you aren’t convinced look at some of the words critically. “Blue sky thinking”. Because in other businesses they have green skies? Are all ideas going to be considered? Really? Or just the ones the boss likes and thinks he can fit into the budget?
Or how about “upselling”? Because no one ever grinds their teeth when the kid at Maccas totals up their order and says, “Would you like fries with that?”

The full story is at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/these-are-the-35-most-actionably-useless-corporate-buzz-words/story-fnkd6ppg-1227324911537#itm=newscomau%7Chome%7Cnca-homepage-masthead-feature%7C3%7Cheading%7Chomepage%7Chomepage&itmt=1430211972954


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.